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Is this why the new Mac Pro has been taking so long?
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[Tangier Clarke] “I just hope that the iMac does not become the only answer. I love the iMac and use a iMac 5K Retina daily, however I preferred being able to choose the monitors I wanted;”
I agree, I have always liked the separation of the monitor and the computer. I felt like if the monitor would go down on the iMac it takes the whole computer down with it.
I remember the first mac I ever had the monitor went down (after years of use). I got another monitor and kept going. The computer never went out.
I watch the clips of people who have cut big budget Hollywood films with X on that now old Mac Pro and I never see them complaining that the computer bogged down or couldn’t handle the work.
Is it beach balling on these big projects, and if it is why aren’t they saying that, and if it isn’t what are they doing differently?
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[Tony West] “I have always liked the separation of the monitor and the computer”
Agreed. The trouble is that currently, it’s hard to find any third party monitor that is reasonably color-accurate without a lot of fiddling. Nothing out there is as close or seamless with Macs as Apple’s own (now defunct) monitor line. That’s not to say they were totally perfect or completely accurate, but they did a better job of displaying the right color across multiple applications. It’s a shame that you can’t get a new Apple display, especially since they obviously still have custom displays made for the iMacs and laptops.
[Tony West] “I watch the clips of people who have cut big budget Hollywood films with X on that now old Mac Pro and I never see them complaining that the computer bogged down or couldn’t handle the work.”
Right now, that’s only two films ☺ But in general, that’s because they are either working with actual FCPX proxy files or externally generated “proxies” for editorial.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “with Macs as Apple’s own (now defunct) monitor line. “
This is a good point. I really like my mac display, but if they don’t put out a new one I will be very disappointed.
Seems like they would need a new display if they put out a new mac pro.[Oliver Peters] “But in general, that’s because they are either working with actual FCPX proxy files or externally generated “proxies” for editorial.
“Wouldn’t you work that way anyway if you were dealing with that much large format footage?
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[Joe Marler] “This was true before widespread use of 4k cameras. The nMP was released in 2013, and probably some design work done in 2012. In 2012 few people envisioned that by 2017, 4k acquisition would be this widespread. Back then people thought the limited 4k distribution and playback infrastructure would diminish the need for 4k acquisition and editing, leading to slow adoption.”
It’s an old cycle though. DV (and MPEG-2 DVD) was a drag on computers until the early 2000’s (an editing PC I built in ’99 had a hardware card designed to improve real-time DV playback). Computers got faster, storage got cheaper and fewer people need to do the offline/online dance with SD. Then HD came out and all of a sudden our computers were ‘slow’ again and offline/online came back. I remember HDV just being a slide show on most computers back then. Now we are seeing the same thing with HD and 4K.
And it’s not just the frame sizes it’s the codecs as well. Even when computers could play a very compressed codec back okay like HDV (MPEG2) or XDCAM EX (MPEG4) a less compressed codec like ProRes or DNx would still perform better. So that was trade off (and still is today). Even with the Mercury Playback Engine you’ll still get better performance using ProRes or DNx than you will using camera native codecs, but if using the camera native codec is ‘good enough’ then people will go that route. That’s certainly what I have done.
6 or 7 years ago I’d always know what cameras were using during production so that I could properly setup FCP 7 or Avid. These days when I’m using PPro I generally don’t need to know. The last three docs I’ve worked on with PPro I couldn’t tell you what cameras were used other than it was a mix of DSLRs, some higher-end handicams and the occasional Alexa shoot.
[Joe Marler] “I’ve seen countless cases where recreational editors are mystified at why their computer became so slow at video editing — “it’s only a GoPro/iPhone/DJI clip”, they say. “
A recreational editor isn’t going to drop $6,000 on a beefy computer though. They’ll being using an iMac or MB and cutting with proxies or optimized media in FCP X which is exactly what Apple intended.
[Joe Marler] “If Apple knew this was going to happen back in 2012, and if they weren’t going to release an updated nMP until 2017, they might have designed the nMP differently with more upgrade options. “
Steve Jobs’ vision for Apple since day one has been to release sealed box, computing appliances and the Mac Pro was the last hold out against that philosophy. I don’t think Apple would’ve changed the design of the nMP because Apple’s solution to the problem is to use proxy editing. If Apple wants a faster nMP all they have to do is release a faster nMP.
Maybe Oliver and other’s are correct in guessing that Apple will release another MP. Maybe the product cycle will be once every 5 years or so (big leaps as opposed to incremental improvements).
[Oliver Peters] “Right now, that’s only two films ☺ But in general, that’s because they are either working with actual FCPX proxy files or externally generated “proxies” for editorial.”
I had to refresh my memory, but “Focus” was cut at online rez. It was shot in anamorphic 2048 x 1536 ProRes 4444 and then converted/ de-squeezed to 2048×1152 ProRes 4444 for editing. They had 145 hours of footage so that’s around… 25TB of data. I think working w/online media was one of the feather’s in X’s cap on that project.
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[Andrew Kimery] “I had to refresh my memory, but “Focus” was cut at online rez. It was shot in anamorphic 2048 x 1536 ProRes 4444 and then converted/ de-squeezed to 2048×1152 ProRes 4444 for editing. They had 145 hours of footage so that’s around… 25TB of data. I think working w/online media was one of the feather’s in X’s cap on that project”
This was still a proxy created for editorial, although “full quality”, but technically still a proxy. However, that’s still a far cry from dealing with 145 hours of ARRIRAW or RED RAW at 4K and higher in a native format. Both “Focus” and “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” benefitted from the fact that these were ARRI shows. Alexa files and ProRes are ideal for Macs and FCPX in particular. For more info, here’s the link to my original interview. Look at the media management section. And the editing didn’t use cheese-grater Macs.
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/focus/
And the changes made for “WTF”:
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/whiskey-tango-foxtrot/
Finally, one other (sort of) “Hollywood” film and FCPX:
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/voice-from-the-stone/
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Tony West] “Wouldn’t you work that way anyway if you were dealing with that much large format footage?”
Maybe. For example, I deal with 4K ProRes files as native a lot these days on some fairly large projects. OTOH, if it’s a RED job, I’ll transcode or use FCPX’s proxy mode. But turnaround time is a big factor and understanding how to manage the media. Letting X transcode RED files to internal proxies is time-consuming. And it doesn’t do any good if the proxies are incorrectly created by someone else and then later the camera masters won’t sync. Certainly not everything needs to be 4K either. So Alexa 2K and HD files are fine natively. Rewrapped FS7 files, for instance, are also something you might stay with in a native form. As with so many things, the answer is “it depends”.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
No, I think this is why:
https://www.videoguys.com/blog/apple-plans-release-late-fall-osx-licensed-systems/
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And that post’s date would be …
☺
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Spoilsport!
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[Oliver Peters] ” I deal with 4K ProRes files as native a lot these days on some fairly large projects.”
What kind of mac do you use?
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